Category: Uncategorized
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Izumi – Kishi Family Connection
Thanks to my fourth cousin Meiko Izumi, the Landscapes of Injustice database, kosekis, and census data, I have more information about the connection between the Kishi and Izumi families. It starts with Kiku Kishi (born 1840), the younger sister of Shojiro, my great great grandfather. She married Uuemon Izumi and they had 4 sons. The…
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Alpine Inn Residents During WWII
I have recently added a spreadsheet to this site that I have been working on intermittently for the past two years. It lists all the residents I could find who lived at Alpine Inn, a self-supporting site located at Christina Lake, BC, during WWII. Thanks to Kathleen Smythe and Nobby Hamagami who did the majority…
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Mourning Sky
We visited the Umami Art Exhibit at the Nikkei National Museum this past weekend when we attended the Nikkei Matsuri celebration. I was surprised by an artwork by Marlene Howell entitled Mourning Sky. It was a painting of confiscated Japanese Canadian fishing boats surrounded by a collage of letters and fishing boat registry pages from…
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Kishizo Kimura and the Nippon Tennis Club
I have written an article about my grandfather Kishizo Kimura and the Nippon Tennis Club (NTC). Much has already been written about the Asahi Baseball Club but the NTC was also popular within the Nikkei community. As far as I can tell, no one has documented the history of the NTC until now. The NTC…
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My Grandfathers Had Both Been Previously Married!
I found out some shocking news after translating some of the koseki documents. Both my grandfathers had previously been married! I don’t think any of their children knew about this. Kiheiji Kishi, my paternal grandfather, had a first wife named Kiyoe Hamachi. They were married on Aug. 1, 1919. Unfortunately, Kiyoe died in Japan on…
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Koseki Documents
This was an exciting week as I received three koseki packages from Japan. They were for the Kimura, Makino, and Kishi families. It is a daunting task to translate them into English, especially when I don’t speak or write Japanese. Thankfully, I was able to use Google Translate and DeepL. It’s incredible how far these…
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Kishizo Kimura Early Years
Mr. Kishizo Kimura was born on May 27, 1899 in the Village of Hikona, an incorporated part of the present city of Yanago, Tottori-ken as the third son of Tsunejiro Matsushita and his wife Taki. On October 12, 1902, Mr. Kimura was legally adopted by Tamotsu Kimura and his wife Mumeno to be their heir.…
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Kishi Family History
Teizo Kishi was a boat builder in Katsuura, Wakayama-ken Japan and owned the Kinpa Inn on the waterfront. He came to Steveston B.C. because he had heard stories about the town’s location near the mouth of the Fraser River and decided that it would a good place to start a boat building business in B.C.…